Designated Targets

—being tackled by two guys who looked like LAPD, until he moved a little closer to discover they worked for the Union Pacific line. They were older than your average beat cop. And fatter. But by God, they could swing a nightstick just as quickly.

Mohr cursed under his breath at the sound of polished hickory smacking into flesh. He’d once stood on a picket line with his old man when it had been broken up by private muscle using ax handles and brass knucks. The sound of the nightsticks took him back there, and he started to trot. Nobody else within thirty yards of the assault was moving. A few women gasped and turned their faces away—they wouldn’t have been from the Task Force, then. A few of the men looked on meekly. Some green kids in army uniforms, who’d been so full of themselves just a minute earlier, looked queasy now. A couple of sailors snickered and pointed.

Mohr glared at them as he picked up speed.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he roared in his fiercest gun-deck voice.

The guy they were hitting, a young kid, a greaser of some sort by the look of him, actually flinched as much under the lash of the chief’s voice as he had under the rain of blows. He was a Mexican, in what had been a new Auxilliary Forces uniform, until it got all torn up and bloodied.

“None of your business, salty,” snarled one of the railroad cops. He had his billy club raised for another blow, and he suddenly seemed to become aware of it hanging up there. Mohr could tell that for a split second he thought about whipping it down one last time, but a cold, fixed stare stayed his hand. The man lowered the weapon uncertainly.

A spell was broken. The tableau on the station concourse began to move again as a furious buzz of conversation started up and spiraled out and away from the confrontation. The kid, a newly minted private, still lay where he’d been taken down. Violent shudders ran through his body as he struggled to choke off sobs and whimpers that wanted to turn into full-blown howling. Mohr willed the kid to keep it together as he bent down under the hostile eyes of the UP cops and gripped him by the arm.

“Suck it up, kid,” he whispered fiercely. “Get on your feet, and cut out the sniveling.”

“What do you think you’re doing? He’s coming with us.”

Mohr turned to confront the guy. His partner hadn’t spoken, and to judge by how he was shrinking away, Mohr didn’t think he would now. “What makes you think he’s going anywhere with you?”

“He’s a thief,” came the retort. “We got a report that he stole a pair of sunglasses.”

The tendons all along Mohr’s jawline stood out as he ground his teeth together. “You—got—a report?”

He freighted the question with about as much contempt as it could carry, which was a fair fucking load. When he’d transferred into the Auxiliaries, he’d expected to take a lot of shit from his old buddies—and he did. But it was basically good-natured. Some of the guys he’d served with on the Astoria were even thinking about making the jump, too. They’d seen the time travelers’ weapons up close, and that was a powerful enticement to swap uniforms. In the end, though, most didn’t. They couldn’t come at learning a whole new set of rules in the Zone.

Mohr regarded the UP cops with cold scorn. It seemed they weren’t so keen on learning the new rules either. It was becoming a real problem all over the city.

“Some asshole loses his fucking sunglasses,” said Mohr, “sees this kid nearby, so you figure to beat him to death in front of a thousand people. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Mohr was this close to hauling off and decking the big ape when a new voice shorted out the dark current that was building up between the two men.

“My brother Lino, he bought these glasses for me when I joined up.”

It was the kid—PRIVATE DIAZ, Mohr now saw from the name tag on his shirt. Diaz smiled anxiously. His teeth were stained fire-engine red with his own blood, and when he spoke, it was in a stuttering, apologetic voice. The sunglasses, which had been damaged beyond repair, dangled from one shaking hand.

“H-he is working with m-my family out on the Williams ranch. He could t-tell you.”

The railway cop dismissed the suggestion with a look that just verged on becoming a sneer. “You assholes couldn’t lie straight in bed. Why would—?”

Whatever he intended to say was cut off when Eddie Mohr’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of shirt. Several onlookers gasped and backed away. Mohr leaned in close and ground out his next words through gritted teeth. “Check out the kid’s story, or pay him for the shades and let him go.”

As the cop squirmed in Mohr’s grip, his partner moved toward them, but a murderous look from the navy chief stopped him dead.

“I mean it,” growled Mohr. “A pair of glasses like that, a farmhand’d work two weeks picking fruit just to buy ’em. You fucked up. You broke ’em. You bought ’em.”

Diaz was about to speak again when someone else rode in over him.

“Chief. Do we have a problem here?”